


My life as a teenage mutant psyker

by V6ilill



Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Dark Comedy, Gen, Grimdark, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Magic, Psychic Abilities, Self-Harm, Teen Angst, Tragedy, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:06:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27354697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/V6ilill/pseuds/V6ilill
Summary: Vaiki had a simple and unfulfilling life, just like everyone else, if with a little more unjustified beatings. But as Vaiki's abilities grow, a rather banal string of murders becomes utterly unbearable.Or: a short story on why being an empath in the grimdark future is a horrible, horrible fate.





	My life as a teenage mutant psyker

No matter how much they beg, Vaiki cannot pray with the crowd. All they have are the half-remembered litanies their mother used to repeat, most in her coarse native tongue. They work, and Vaiki feels calmer for knowing them.

But Vaiki can sweep the floors and polish the furniture. They see so much more than they should have. Everyone has a trouble to repent over, many not even aware of that before they are made to kneel and whip themselves. Vaiki is glad to know their own. But they are not so happy to know those of others.

Everyone is broken. Everyone has a shadow to follow them around, even if they don’t feel it. Vaiki witnesses a woman pray for a son, and sees the flickering image of a boy stand behind her. Vaiki witnesses a man grieve for his daughter, and sees a pile of beige sludge lapping at his feet. Vaiki sees a man throwing out his wife for her dishonor, and there is a burning paper figure watching the woman, while the man is flanked by two frog-like creatures that stand on two legs. Vaiki does not know what to make of that, but they feel these feelings as if they were their own.

Vaiki does not see their own shadow. Perhaps they are too tainted to realize their own dishonor. Perhaps their shame is too obvious for a reminder. But they can hear the shadow’s voice banging on their head, wanting to make them feel better. Telling Vaiki they can make themself lovable, if they only dived into the unlit trench that was their power. Egging them on, promising a way to make the world just. It’s a constant pressure on their skull, banging knocking - and the suffering all around always makes the scraping worse.

Vaiki does not listen, because everyone always lies. Even their mother, who told them they were loved, who told them they were important and valued - where is she now?

(Vaiki does not think of her too hard. When they do, the walls begin to swim and they can feel a bubbling purple something in the back of their head. If such thoughts come, Vaiki pulls their hair until the pain stops the biting memories)

Vaiki does not dwell on that. Vaiki runs from the shadows and the suffering. They put their feelings into stone, grinding their fists into it. Their power cannot break it. They are have not dived deep enough - or they’re just weak. Their fingers and nails break instead. When Vaiki finds the shadows pressing on them stronger than usual, they just run. There are plenty of empty sewers and silent waste heaps where they can run. Run endlessly, until their legs give in, unburdened by the troubles of others.

Eventually, someone still comes there, their garbage overflowing from their mind, trailing behind them. Then Vaiki leaves and goes back. They clean the sewers for their Madam, their lady and mistress, by whose mercy they live, and they don’t think much when they do. Everything always gets worse when Vaiki thinks too hard on it.

(why did their mother take in a mutant that was not her own? Who were their birth parents? Where did mother come from? Is it really a planet of “deep woods and tempestous seas”, as she said? What’s a wood?)

“Have you heard of young Mei? A most sudden end,” a neighborwoman chittered, her shadow mouthing after her with its seven maws “It is said that a single glass shard was inset in her left eye, just like the young man near your cousins’ house.”

“May her soul find forgiveness for her sins,” another nodded solemnly, attempting to cover the battered wall of her house with plaster. Her shadow only smiled at the news of the death. “My sympathy for the young man as well, whoever he was.”

‘Whoever he was’. As if someone of more polite standing would’ve mourned him were he a mutant.

Vaiki hurried past, dead rat in her hands. Their madam had wanted supper, and as the most expendable servant, Vaiki had been sent into the dark to retrieve it. They didn’t mind that, though the tunnels were so quiet that Vaiki could hear themself think. Occasionally, something would clang or creak or howl in the darkness, and Vaiki would hide, trusting their diminutive size to conseal them. This time, the rat had been easy to fell and Vaiki hadn’t even gotten bit.

But when Vaiki returned, they saw beautiful, sweet Lin kissing a thug from the lower hab-block. The air was thick with love, and the gleeful torturer was radiating rainbows and hearts from every orifice. Even their shadows were entwined.

Vaiki wanted to vomit and never eat anything ever again. They hadn’t even noticed how pretty Lin was, how stunning under a certain light. How much she loved that rat, how deep their fluttery red feeling went - how it was only his and hers. Not Vaiki’s. Never Vaiki’s. But now they knew, and the knowledge wouldn’t let them rest. 

Vaiki delivered the dead rat and crawled into a corner, away from anyone’s shadow. There they could pretend nobody was waiting out there for them, casting darkness over Vaiki. Nobody else had the fortune of seeing those apparitions. Nobody else here had the good luck to be both mutant and witch, to be abandoned by a birth mother and a foster mother, to have a great danger always looming over them, threatening to erupt into reality and no great power to show for it.

Everyone said witches were dangerous - could bend a man to their will, could crack walls and level houses with their minds. All Vaiki could do was feel the suffering of their fellows while capable of nothing to ease the pain. They didn’t even know how close-range romance felt until now.

Many things changed that year. Vaiki began to gain in height, their greatly elongated head losing the remaining chubbiness in the cheeks. Beautiful girls and cute boys suddenly became desirable. A gleeful killer continued to stuff glass shards into the corpses of his victims. But most of all, the shadows grew to blanket all around them. No longer could Vaiki afford to look away and pretend they were just watching a recording, now the darkness which resided within everyone was tangible, suffusing the air, polluting the water, radiating through walls.

There was no escape now. The shadows were always over Vaiki, always looming. Though their shapes faded and distorted, the feelings cloaked everything like a deep fog. Vaiki could no longer pretend the suffering of others was far from them, nothing to be concerned over.

Especially not as the murders continued.

No one on the street was safe and the corpses of the slaughtered were defiled with glass shards (though the destruction was usually limited to the left eye. Usually). Vaiki saw mothers and fathers cry in anguish, finding their children dead on the doorstep. Their sorrow rose over Vaiki like a tidal wave, washing away all their self-control, threatening to let the darkness lodged in their skull out. Vaiki saw lovers swear vengeance over the corpses of their fancies, and anger choked the mutant like a noxious cloud from a manufactorium’s chimney, overtaking reason and logic, making every injustice they had been dealt the past five years blinding in their intensity. Vaiki witnessed children forced onto the streets by the deaths of their caretakers and was immersed in confusion, utterly lost, unaware even of their location or name, with the fear of not living till tomorrow stabbing at their gut.

Vaiki had beaten their foot against a metal railing for an hour after that. They had felt that way once too, when their mother abandoned them. Shortly before - or was it after? - that, they began seeing shadows. Now, they were being immersed in emotions. What next? Reading minds? Stealing memories?

No, no no no, no! Vaiki wasn’t going to do that! It was impossible- they would never grow that mighty - not without training! They couldn’t- they wouldn’t- ! Vaiki tugged at their hair. That hadn’t even happened. Those problems didn’t exist. Vaiki didn’t care in the slightest about such things. They were happy and indifferent in apathy. Now, onto the much more pressing matter of scrubbing shitstains from the sidewalk. Who made them, anyway? The rats?

The murders continued, one person every other week. Sometimes two. People had taken to calling the maniac The Conqueror, because he conquered them by sowing fear, nobody daring to even truly investigate after what happened to Li and Rose. The corpses were usually found charred, often unrecognizably grotesque. Vaiki wasn’t disturbed by that in the slightest, but the nausea others felt at the sight made them retch and even throw up more than once. Vaiki had to separate these feelings from their own, had to get them out of their head, they didn’t belong there anyway, leave leave LEAVE- and carry on living. That was the only solution.

Or . . .

No, that was insanity - Vaiki couldn’t possibly- and yet they were a witch, weren’t they? Maybe they could do something good with their wretched existence and free the world from the killer. Maybe their power was growing for a reason - maybe they would soon be able to summon horrid beasts and fling lightning from their fingertips like everyone said witches could. Maybe the Conqueror was a witch as well - why else would almost every victim be burned? Yes, that was it - Vaiki had a responsibility to do good with their power, useless as it was.

First though, Vaiki would have to actually find the killer. There. That was so easy to say, was it not? But how would Vaiki go about this, when they didn’t even know every victim, didn’t know how the killer picked them? And if Vaiki found someone, nobody would listen to them. They would have to fight a killer all alone, with their butcher’s knife and too much empathy.

Well, most murders happened at midnight, when very few - and even fewer people - walked the streets. This wasn’t the underhive, not yet. Guessing by what the locals spoke of their neighbors further down, Vaiki wouldn’t have survived a week, especially not the young, scared Vaiki who got thrown to the seven winds while barely speaking the local tongue.

So, every evening and night after work, Vaiki would tiptoe out of the shack which they shared with seventeen other workers and wait. Wait and watch in the darkness, far away from anyone who could save them. Vaiki realized on the first night that they made a good target - all alone, small and skinny. Nevertheless, they persisted in their nightly pursuits. They would care for their own safety when it was threatened, not before. They had nothing to worry about. Nothing at all. And nothing they could do but wait.

On the seventh night of their vigil, as Vaiki was dozing off in the shade of an overturned dumpster, they sensed a spark of terror in the darkness. It rose in fever pitch, pain bleeding through the fear, burning, burning-

Vaiki put a hand over their mouth, biting the soft flesh of their palm. If they started screaming, they were next. They crept out into the street, their back against a scrap fence. The metal scraped their back lightly, but otherwise caused no sound.

In the light of a solitary hanging lumen, Vaiki saw the Conqueror: a feeble, wiry customs’ official living on the street corner all alone. His victim was a young man, struggling feebly as the murderer blasted wave after wave of fire from his hands, scorching the victim into the pavement. As the Conqueror bent down and flipped his quarry over to begin inserting the glass shard, Vaiki ducked out of view, thankful for their small size. Even a door haphazardly positioned to lean on the fence could hide them from view.

The Conqueror left his latest victim to lay there, smiling down at the hapless fool who happened to cross his path. The young man resembled a pile of dry manure more than he did a person, his face the only unburnt part of his body. His pain had faded long ago, no use staring at him now. Vaiki turned their gaze to the killer.

His shadow was the headless corpse of a woman, naked and mutilated. Very faint, as all shadows seemed these days, but still visible enough for Vaiki to gasp.

The Conqueror caught the movement. The air filled with a quiet contentment, and the anticipation of something quite delightful, only instead of a bath or hot meal, the man was expecting to pleasurably burn down a teenager. Vaiki drew their little knife, waving it in front of their face. They would have to gut him like they gutted rats. Instinct compelled them to run from trouble as they had ran from all other problems. The Conqueror lit an eye-scathingly bright flame in his hand and swung an arc of fire at Vaiki. They jumped back behind the door and the heat blackened the fence instead.

The air was unbearably tense, filled with the horrid pressure Vaiki used to only feel inside their skull. The street smelled of charred flesh. Vaiki took a deep breath and leapt into a side alley, just in time for the Conqueror to throw a fireball at the mutant. Vaiki wanted to run, but they knew they would never find peace or forgiveness if they did. The maniac spewed curses, the world around jittering with his annoyance.

The Conqueror sent a blazing inferno at Vaiki, who scrambled deeper into the alley. The door put up against the fence had already caught fire, the smoke and blaze waking the neighbors. Flames danced in front of Vaiki, grasping at the sky, smoke billowing all around to choke the life from the mutant. Vaiki waved their hands, trying to dispel the blaze, but the pressure in their head spiked and they dropped their arms. Their eyes burned and itched.

Vaiki felt like a hero in a particularly good story, the kind that made one wait on the edge of their seat with bated breath as the characters braved impossible odds. Yes, that was it. Vaiki watched the Conqueror walk through the fire unscathed and backed away, stopping only when their back hit a wall. Everything was fine. They weren’t really there, as if reading a really engaging book. The story’s hero was brave, calm and collected (nothing like Vaiki, who was at the moment eternally grateful for having utilized the loo beforehand), and when the villain brandished another fireball, scowling in disdain, the hero only watched, defiant of the threat.

At the precise moment the flame shot towards the hero, they dodged to the left, slamming into a building. Vaiki bit their lip as their shoulder bruised against the uneven ferrocrete, leaving them to tumble into the dust.

The Conqueror only laughed, like he’d been told a particularly witty joke. The people yelled and ran around somewhere far away, none daring to stop the Conqueror from claiming another victim. If it wasn’t for the magic fire, most would happily join him in putting down Vaiki. The mutant stared up at the killer, their muscles tensed. The man wasted no time in throwing another burning jet at them. Vaiki rolled away, backing up against a wall. The Conqueror’s flame exploded in his face.

Vaiki took a moment to catch their bearings and calm themself, pretending they were nothing more than a meat puppet piloted by a higher power. A blunt instrument, good for laboring with little food and remaining unnoticed. Lean arms, long fingers to carry large boxes, elongated head with sharp protruding teeth - fit for menial labor in cramped compartments. Not a body worth worrying for.

The moment of distraction was enough. Vaiki didn’t even have the time to blink before a wall of fire was careening towards them, inescapable in every direction.

Vaiki snapped their eyes shut, willing the heat to go away, leave them alone, go, there’s nothing here to burn- In those final moments, they pretended they weren’t there at all, merely an observer of events out of their control. Running away from trouble as they were wont to do, taking attention from their pounding heart and nausea, pouring it somewhere else. And the flames weren’t there at all, the Conqueror’s next victim remaining unburnt. The heat wasn’t real, the fire wasn’t there, none of it was real, the one who ought to burn was the Conqueror, he ought to burn instead, ought to burn, had to burn, was burning-

(not me not me he’s on fire not me burn him burn him not me sinners need fire not me NOT ME-)

-and he did. The fire bounced off Vaiki, mirroring back to its maker. The Conqueror lit in a flash like kindling, illuminating the whole alley in his death throes. He screamed and the fire roared, until his burned husk fell down. As his life ended, so did the blaze.

Vaiki stared, not even registering the Conqueror’s agony. They fell onto their knees, shaking and dripping with cold sweat. Their stomach was jumping up and down, trying to empty itself. Vaiki looked down at their hands, head ringing. Everything was fine. Totally fine. Those hands covered in soot and scorchmarks? They weren’t Vaiki’s. Nothing here was. They were just reading a good story. Or hearing a heart-stirring tale. Or dreaming. None of this was worth getting worked up over. Vaiki’s body, that paltry flesh-suit they piloted, would be just fine and would return to work come the morning.

“That mutant - now a witch too?” came a woman’s shrill wail “Gracious Emperor, how has it been left alive?! All this time, I’ve lived near this-!”

“The best way to get rid of a neighbor is with a nice sharp ax, madam” another woman suggested “Wanna try?”

“Well, since I presume you have more important matters occupying your time . . .” the local began uncertainly.

“No, actually, just reacquainting myself with the city,” the second woman disagreed. She was very near Vaiki, from the sound of it. “You have no idea how tedious the job is. After thirty years, every wannabe master manipulator and mildly unthreatening street tough start looking the same. What wouln’t I give to find the nearest real conspiracy . . .”

Footsteps approached Vaiki. Everything was fine. Everything had to be fine, they had work in the morning. The madam would skin their fingers if they failed to turn up on time.

“Feeling crispy, no?” the woman stopped next to Vaiki. She seemed curious, searching for something. Vaiki couldn’t discern any other feelings.

“What?” they mumbled “Madam, it’s- it’s not painful, I assure you.”

“Those singed fingers will start annoying you soon,” the stranger predicted “Or they might rot off! Oh, but don’t trouble yourself too much, you’ll probably be dead before dawnbreak. What’s your name, by the way? If you have one, I mean. Never saw the sense in those anyway, numbers are far more efficient. I’ll make a wild guess and say you don’t exactly have a home to write back to, but records are records and paperwork is always lurking.”

“Merilaas Vaiki, madam,” the mutant stated “No, I do not have a home, I work for Madam- dead by dawnbreak? How so?”

The woman laughed, her joy gleeful and unpleasantly prodding. “I see that you’ve taken a few bricks to that long head of yours. What happened to the spatial awareness you so readily demonstrated during tha skirmish?”

“I am very winded, madam,” Vaiki sighed, turning to the woman “And attempting to calm myself.”

“Of course,” she said cheerily “Neat trick you did there, throwing back the flames. Ever tried that before?”

The Inquisitor stared straight at Vaiki through the lenses of her gas mask, leaning casually on the wall. Blocking the exit, Vaiki realized a moment too late, their eyes caught on the woman’s shadow. It hung in the air like a paint stain, glaringly bright and obvious. While the shadows of others had faded over the years, this one was in sharp focus, its white empty eyes trained on Vaiki, seeing straight through them.

Vaiki’s feet turned to mush and they slumped back on the ground, the incorporeal manifestation of inner turmoil scorching them with its glare.

The Inquisitor chortled to herself at the youth’s feebleness “Oh, don’t give me that look, I haven’t even begun interrogating you. How kind of you to provide some entertainment for the night,” she took Vaiki by the arm and set them upright “Now come along, I left my pliers at the hotel. And those are some damn good pliers as I’m sure you’ll soon find.”

All that remained of Vaiki was an empty bedroll near the sewer, and even that got stolen a week later.


End file.
